The Price on Castiel's Soul
by RaeLee15
Summary: Dean remembered when Joshua the angel had first laid eyes on Cheyenne. He looked as if he had just seen the face of God. "You don't understand, Dean, she's not just a human anymore," Castiel muttered as he nursed his third bottle of whiskey. "Enlighten me." Cas met Dean's sea green eyes but he could barely choke out the words. "God chose her to be the new ruler of Heaven."


The sound of someone breaking down the Winchesters' cheap motel door was like the lighting of a firecracker in Dean's brain.

His fingers quickly hitched to the handle of the shotgun under his pillow and faster than the human eye could catch, Dean was upright on his feet, chest heaving, the barrel of his weapon pointed right at Castiel's forehead. Sam, who had toppled over his chair, aimed his pistol at the angel's heart.

"God Almighty, Cas," Dean growled as he lowered his gun, "I could've shot you in the fa-" The rest of Dean's words piled up in a traffic jam behind his teeth as he took a good look at what had really just thundered in through the door.

Against Castiel's worn trench coat was a woman covered in dirt. And blood.

"Cas, why the hell are you carrying a body, man?" Sam ran a hand through his hair and shifted on his feet, unsure what to do next. Cas' eyes couldn't really focus on Dean's face or the barrage of questions that Sam continued to fire at him.

Surreal. Everything felt so surreal.

"Earth to Castiel," Dean angrily waved a hand in front of the angel's face, "Would you like to explain why you're carrying a dead woman in the middle of my motel room?"

"Not dead," Castiel said roughly after finally finding his voice, "Resurrected."

"From which end of the afterlife?" asked Sam, eyeing the woman suspiciously as he caught a glimpse of her lungs shrinking and expanding.

"Mine." Castiel dropped the woman on Dean's bed. "I'm in need of some rope."

"What, you're going to tie her up?" asked Dean, searching Castiel's face for answers. There were none.

"Yes, that is my intention."

"Cas, I don't understand-"

"Neither do I, Sam, but we'll get answers as soon as she wakes up." He stopped hovering over the woman to look at Dean. Something swam behind his blue eyes and a knot of concern welled up behind Dean's ribs. Cas was just as confused as he was.

"Salt the windows and the door. Paint the Devil's Trap on the ceiling," Castiel muttered to the Winchesters as they continued to stand there, loaded guns hanging from their fingertips. Sam snapped right out of it and went right to work, going outside to crack open the trunk of the Impala.

"And Dean?"

The eldest brother wrenched his eyes from the woman on his bed, barely breathing, dark earth spread over like a second skin. Blood trickled slowly down her chin.

He met Castiel's gaze.

"We're going to need the holy oil, too."

* * *

Castiel paced before the unconscious woman. They had tied her up in Sam's chair, feet and hands bound tightly. She slumped over, her head lolling to one side. Her long dark hair blanketed her dirty cheeks from view.

The Devil's Trap was drawn in black paint above her and Cas had encircled the girl with a ring of holy oil. He kept the lighter tight in his hand. It was a little after four in the morning.

"She's not to leave this room until I figure out who and what she is. Agreed?" Cas looked back at the boys. They nodded, an array of items laid out on Sam's bed and their guns loaded, the safety off, ready to fire.

Without wasting another moment Castiel pressed two firm fingers to the girl's forehead and she woke up. Her chest rattled as she took in the sharpest breath and she nearly toppled her chair over in surprise as she looked at the three men, two of them armed, all staring menacingly at her. She couldn't inhale enough oxygen as she realized the state of her limbs, immobile and useless. The room smelled of too much whiskey and old laundry and gunpowder. The lights were blinding and artificial. And the rope burned against her skin the longer she struggled.

The girl knew three things as her eyes flitted furiously around the room, trying to maintain some gravity; She was trapped, she was defenseless, and she was _alive. _

"What is your name?" asked Castiel. He was curt, his eyes narrowed angrily at the girl. Dean found that he was watching the angel more than the human.

"This is impossible, I'm dead." The girl blinked up at Castiel several times, unsure whether or not he was real flesh and bone and not some weird hallucination in heaven. He caught her stare and she realized she had never seen a human being with eyes that blue before.

"That's not what I asked you, I asked for your name."

"Cheyenne," she whispered sadly, "I'm Cheyenne."

"Well Cheyenne," Dean said seriously, taking a step towards the bound woman. She tore her eyes away from Cas to look up into Dean's face. "My buddy Cas would like to ask you a few questions. Full cooperation is strongly advised." He tightened his grip on his shotgun and Cheyenne looked frightened for a moment. But the fear fleeted away and her eyes were back on Castiel as he unscrewed the cap on a flask.

More whiskey?

Suddenly there was water in her eyes and in her nose and Cheyenne spat out the little liquid that entered her mouth. She blinked away her blurry vision until the men came back in view. Castiel, she recalled, set down the flask.

"Not a demon," he said nonchalantly to Dean who merely nodded.

"Of course I'm not a demon, I came from Heaven," said Cheyenne impatiently. She tried twisting her wrists free but the knot was too tight.

Over the next fifteen minutes the boys and Castiel performed every basic test they knew to determine what Cheyenne had been trying to tell them the whole time. She's only a human.

"Look, I don't know how much has changed since I've been dead but you guys are making absolutely no sense. I'm not a demon or a vampire or shape shifter, I didn't even know that stuff was probable until I crawled out of my own grave! I'm only human, I promise."

Castiel looked at Dean and Sam who looked just as baffled as the angel. He still hadn't told them why they had a simple girl tied up in their motel room. Sure she had, as she put it, crawled out of her own grave but both Sam and Dean had died and resurrected several times. It didn't make any sense.

"Cas, I don't think she's dangerous…we don't have to keep her tied up," said Dean, his eyes shifting uncomfortably between Cas and Cheyenne. She was looking pleadingly at the angel with no idea that he was the least human person in the room.

"We don't know that," mumbled Sam, eyeing Cheyenne from head to toe, studying her. Castiel stepped between them.

"Where did you even find this girl? Why did you find her?" Dean laid down his shotgun and continued to demand answers from Castiel who couldn't tear his eyes away from the girl.

Not once had she looked away.

"I found her in Oklahoma."

"What the hell were you doing in Oklahoma?" asked Dean.

"Looking for her."

"Well why were you looking for her, Cas?" asked Sam, a little less demanding. He still held his pistol tightly in his right hand.

"She called to us." Cas squatted down, putting himself at eye-level with the girl. He looked as deep as he could, digging around in her mind but he couldn't find anything. Her mind was blank.

The first image filed away was his own icy blue eyes staring down at her.

"To the angels?"

"Yes." Castiel suddenly stood up and turned to Dean. His lips were pressed in a thin line and he himself tried to find some gravity in the situation. "She called to us from the Earth. In the language of Heaven."

"Is she a prophet?" asked Sam, listening intently for the wrath of an arc angel to appear.

"No, I would've known her name."

"Cas-"

"All I know Dean is that suddenly every angel in Heaven and Earth heard the cry of a voice we had never heard before. The sky began to sing and what remains of God's kingdom rejoiced…" He looked both boys in the eyes and they could see Cas was angry and worried and scared. Castiel swallowed and whispered, "An angel had been born."

"But she's human," protested Sam. "She's human in every way!"

"She doesn't even _feel_ like an angel. I can always sense my brothers when they're near. But her? She feels to me as you do. Plain humanity."

"I am not an angel." Cheyenne began to squirm as Cas pulled his Angel Knife from inside his trench coat. "Castiel, please, I'm not an angel, I'm just a girl!"

Suddenly frightened for her life as Cas began to close in on her with the blade, Cheyenne struggled heavily with the rope. It burned across her skin and she wished she could kick and claw this man—this angel—away from her. But he kept coming and there was a look in his blue eyes that made her stomach lurch.

He tucked the tip of the blade under her chin and made her look at him. His eyes had suddenly grown cold and she couldn't bear to watch them anymore.

"Who are you?" he whispered. Cheyenne trembled.

"Cas, hold on a minute man, she doesn't know anything! Look at her, she's scared shitless!"

"If you're what I think you are, this is going to hurt."

Cheyenne looked at him once more.

"And if it doesn't?"

Castiel thought for a moment. He tucked a piece of her long dark hair behind her ear and gave the smallest smile. It was confused and sad.

"I'll kill you."

"Cas, don't!"

Dean reached to stop his friend but Castiel had already trailed the knife across the girl's collarbone where the skin hissed and sizzled like a burn, blood slipping down over her shirt and onto the floor.

She screamed. Cheyenne screamed and it sounded like nails on chalkboard and broken glass and crumpling steel all at once. The Winchester boys dropped everything and doubled over, hands against their ears to try and ease the agony in their heads.

Castiel, wide-eyed and unsure of what to do next, quickly snapped the blade away from the girl's skin. Dean fumbled back and tried to flick on the lighter as quick as he could but the flame wouldn't appear and right before Castiel could summon his own fire, with a last terrifying screech, Cheyenne was gone. The circle of holy oil lit up around an empty chair and a length of rope that thudded to the floor and every piece of glass in the room exploded.

Cheyenne was gone and the boys stood there, amazed at what just happened.

They knew three things for sure.

One, their deposit was shot to hell.

Two, Castiel for the first time had been afraid.

And three, they had just encountered a human angel.


End file.
